Steel Reserve

This beer is like the sleeper hit of the year. You have seen it down at the local gas and go and perhaps never even gave it any mind, you don’t see it many places but when you do, give it a try. This is an easy drinking beer. You can really taste the malted barley, which is what gives this beer it’s sweet taste profile which ends in an overall refreshing taste. This is however, a more one-dimensional beer in that it is best as just a drinking beer and not so much one you would pare with food. This is however a fantastic drinking beer. Let me set the scene for you, it is a winter night you find yourself in a semi rural pasture surrounded by old friends, a camp fire is going and you are all standing around recalling stories about remember when, and a Steel Reserve in every hand. Closing out the year with this one being in the running for beer of the year is a wonderful segue to the beer of the year award rundown. In no particular order, 1) shiner smokehaus 2) Rock Ice Limon 3) Anchor Steam 4) Sakara Gold 5) Steel Reserve. All of these beers have been in my opinion outstanding and deserving of the beer of the year. So look out for next weeks Beer of the year, just in time for Christmas and the New Year.

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale

A melding of the bitter and the sweet, the first thing you taste is bitter pumpkin with sweet undertones of caramelized brown sugar, which one would find around the edge of one of Grandmothers Thanksgiving pumpkin pies. We round out this beer with an uncommon smoky finish. This beer is one you can enjoy before during and after your Thanksgiving Day meal. This is a wonderful beer from a wonderful beer company, so enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving, and as always, think right, drink right, lest you end up at the po po’s place for Thanksgiving.

P.s. thanks to http://justbeer.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/harvest-moon-pumpkin-ale/ for the pic and thank you to Blue Moon Brewing Co.

Old Peculier

As ale’s go this is rather tasty and goes very well with spicy foods. It has a creamy dark chocolate taste that sits at the back of the tongue; it has a velvety texture in the mouth as well so enjoy this one as the temp starts to drop.

Grolsch Lager

A contradiction in terms, bitter, yet refreshing. It tastes like a dark coffee beer should but looks like a Heineken. The beer is fairly simple tasting and that is really sad because this bottle is one of the best looking I have ever seen and it is truly a shame that the stuff inside is not as good as the bottle looks.

Leinenkugel brewing Co Berry Weiss

Sweet and watery in quality after sampling another offering from this brewer it is my inclination that perhaps we are dealing with a one trick pony here. This offering is mediocre at best, ok it is sweet, it is lightly refreshing, blaw, blaw, blaw. It is everything but inspiring, if anything it is a carbon copy of the Sunset wheat by the same company.

Sakara Gold

This is perhaps the most refreshing lager I have ever had and coming from Egypt that is a good thing. Because it is so dang hot over there that a dark beer would not go over well at all and at a whopping 500 Ml a bottle the powerful refreshment just keeps coming, any bitterness that might be found in say an American or European lager is missing. This beer goes well with grilled yellow squash and turkey burgers with Brie cheese. The sugars in the squash help to embellish all of those non-bitter lager tastes. Please enjoy this beer ice cold, hell it even says to do so right on the bottle. This is without a doubt the most refreshing lager I have ever had and that is saying allot because I am such a loud lager lasher that when a lager beer comes along that is so refreshing that I have this many good things to say about it, you know it is worth your time. This beer is good with food and as a standalone. Perhaps the best occasion to enjoy this beer is on one of those record breaking days we just finished with as you grill some fish or poultry on the grill with friends. In conclusion, it is no wonder that this beer is so good, Egypt is thought to be one of the first places that beer was brewed, so they have had quite some time to get it right. Enjoy

Stella Artois

This review comes from a June 8th Wall Street Journal article talking about how Anheuser Bush is now the exclusive U.S. importer of the beer and how as a result, bars and pubs are coming up high and dry. When it comes to getting the beer. The fact that the beer was becoming had to fade me want to go out and get some for myself, RIGHT AWAY!!!! Disappointed that there were no singles I got the whole six pack. When I am trying a new beer I always like to get a single to see if I like it or not, this way if it turns out that I don’t care for the beer I have not wasted my money, and in this day and age one can never be too frugal when it comes to making sound dissuasions with beer money. Unfortunately this beer tastes just like a Budweiser. If you find that you just love lagers, my suggestion is to pick a cheap one and stick with it because all but a few lagers taste the same. I can only hope that you’ll drink beer for the beer, not the label on the bottle. It was at that time that I had been suckered into rushing out and purchasing a beer because of the fact that it was made out to be this really good beer that was so popular that it was being consumed at a record pace. Only to find that I had been bamboozled, I hate when a beer has a cool new label and the company pumps mega dollars into promotions only to find that it taste the same as others. "Stells" as the beer is refereed to my hipsters in the bars is a standard brew by European standards while it’s popularity is rising on the east and west coast sense Budwiser is now the only distributor of this beer which is pinching out all the other distributors who were the original distributors before Anheuser Bush took over. Anheuser is turning into the Wal-mart of the beer world. Which since the time when I first created this beer review has been bought by the European distributor of Stella Artois, how fitting that the big boys of American Beer are now owned by a European company. How the big have fallen. In conclusion to this rant, if you want to look cool at the bar drink "Stella" if you want to drink a lager, drink a Budwiser and save some money. Think right, drink right.

Thanks to http://www.austrianbeer.co.uk for the pic, I just did not have a pick.